Rud’s electric chair (as I’m sure you know, the term ‘Electric Chair’ has a slightly different & more sinister meaning in the USA): At one point, Muv was contemplating getting a motorized wheelchair called by Timmo Bailey the Racing Bath Chair, as Muv thought the max. speed shld be approx. 40 m.p.h. She wanted one with a side seat for José,1 and it should only turn left so as not to cross traffic. It would only go to Harrods & back from the Mews. Unfortunately it never materialized – can’t you see her whizzing down Brompton Rd?
Much love, Steake
Darling Honks
Yesterday came a woman whose ambition was to nurse a piglet.* You simply can’t imagine what a comic scene it was, her & me sitting in the straw with first one & then another of a litter of nine Glos Old Spots, eight days old. She looked like the Alice in Wonderland person, & you never heard such a noise as the squeals of the unlucky piglets whose ambition was not to be nursed. The dau. of the woman had kept it a secret as she said her mother would have been so excited she might have given up coming. As it was, when I asked her if she had enjoyed her birthday treat she said in broadest Derbyshire ‘I’M STILL SHAKING’. ‘What are we to do for your next birthday’ I said. ‘Well my other ambition is to go on a fire engine when it’s on the way to a fire’.
Much love, Debo
Dearest Hen,
Sickness & Health Notes: Woman will outlive us all, from yr account. In America, one is constantly reading in the pop. press about the Heart Attack Prone Personality, means lots of worrying & striving for high achievement & all such bosh. So Woman takes all in stride, including amazing quick death of her erstwhile wife1 & not worrying at all about it. ‘Wonderfully unmoved’, as you wrote.
This end: Bob’s replaced knee is working fine, but now the OTHER knee is giving trouble. So forward to that, but he is actually amazingly OK such as going for a hiking/fishing trip in the Sierra mts. the other day, & springs out to his office daily to ply his trade. My slogan: NO NEW KNEE UNTIL THE NEW YEAR, as he’s coming on all travel NY-London.
I’m also annoyingly crippled (I think I was last time we met when Woman got me a really smashing walking stick in local PO, Bamburgh, Grace Darling territory) so now I’ve got a physiotherapist student who comes & walks me, as ’twere a footman with his employer’s dog, three times a week. Goal is for me to spring about Hampstead Heath like a mountain goat when in London, v. doubtful of achievement, but am hoping for the best. She also makes me do strengthening exercises when she comes. I fear that the real trouble is laziness on my part – not minding as much as some might not walking spryly. I am trying.
The next treat in store will be Alzheimer’s Disease (known by Pele2 as Old Timers’ Disease) which has struck many friends my age AND YOUNGER. Horrors. I can see it coming – loss of memory, already here. Am expecting to forestall main symptoms until after our London trip.
Lastly, sickness/health-wise, just yesterday I got some false teeth – not the whole lot, things on a sort of metal holder to replace a few lost ones. As King Lear said, Sans eyes, sans teeth, sans everything.3 That’s yr Hen in advanced years.
Well Hen – so much for a cheerful account – never mind. See you VV SOON.
Yr Hen
Darling Woo
All the news from England is just too sad I can hardly bear to listen.1 How can it ever get better? I expect it (England) will leave Europe, just as well as everyone is so anti. It won’t affect Europe but it will make things harder for England. I sometimes think England would love to have another war, luckily it can’t so there’s no danger. Germany & France so hated, can’t imagine quite why. Can you explain.
It’s so beautiful here, I wish you were here. Lovely sun. Quite hard frost.
They sent a book about the Profumo affair for me to review, I thought how mad & then remembered it’s nearly 30 years ago! So young people have probably never heard of it.
All love Woo, Nard
Darling Stublow
I wish you could have seen us two travelling & in Zurich. As Nard says we make one person: she can’t hear but can walk, I can hear but can’t walk. The result is that she rushes ahead & I can’t call her if anything important happens. Our compartment on the train was 1/4 mile up the platform – she was there before I was ½ way! She carried the bags as I can’t carry a thing with two sticks, only my bag slung round my Kneck.
Much love from Woman
Dearest Hen,
V.v. glad to have yrs of 8 May. My corrections minuscule.1 Point is, though, that reading the letters memories came flooding back – more like ghosts in fact.
Comments on yr comments: Fully agree abt snobbishness, already noted by Bob who’d read the whole thing before yr letter came. I wasn’t too surprised, always thought she veered in that direction. But it comes in undistilled double dosage via the letters.
Nancy & money: Did you note how it’s a wild see-saw ride, even after she became ‘so riche’ (her to me in the Dior boutique – ‘poor little Sissie, she’s so riche’) she’s either absolutely awash with dough or sunk in poverty. Thinking back to childhood, & watching her all through engagement to Hamish & how she loathed Swinbrook & longed to be free of Muv etc – her fate, to be stuck in that life because she hadn’t got any way of escape being without money even after she started writing, was a huge influence on me, then and forever. That is, the rather obvious fact that one can’t be independent of others (whether parents or husbands) unless one can earn one’s own living.
Dink/Terry are coming here from June 11 to 21, I’m so excited for their visit. She/Benj are planning a 50th wedding anniversary for Bob/me on 20 June – you’ll be getting an invite. It’s to be at what Benj calls the ‘FUCK’, i.e. First Unitarian Church, Kensington. No Hen not a real church like Swinbrook, more a hall with kitchen food.
Yr loving Henderson
Darling Stublow
I wish Sophy had a nicer name for the baby, it sounds like something out of arithmetic or out of Latin. Isn’t there a lesson in Latin – declining?’1
Much love from Woman
Darling Honks
The D Tel ed., whom I’ve never seen but am rather keen on over the telephone, rang up at the 11th hour after I’d sent him last week’s effort, obviously embarrassed. It took him ages to get it out, ‘what’s wrong?’ I said after his humming & hawing. ‘Well, although you’ve done the right number of words you’ve used such short ones that I’m afraid I want 50 more to fill the space.’ Honks do admit. When I send the last go on Tues I shall put in the covering Fax letter that I promise I’ll learn some longer ones & that I did warn Max Hastings1 that I can’t even do proper joined up writing … let alone use long words.
Much love, Debo
Darling Woo
I quite agree N’s letters do make one feel sad. Nearly all adolescents are in revolt, but almost always some childhood love of parents remains. In Nancy’s case she really sounds as if she hated Muv & Farve. I was very unpopular with Muv & Farve when they strongly objected to my leaving Bryan, but I always realized they thought I was ruining my life, & only wanted the best for me. We quite soon made it up & as you know Muv loved Kit & he positively adored her. Years later Farve came here & was wonderful with Kit, but that was in 1952 I think. As to Tom, N’s letter to Decca1 is not just rubbish but so spiteful. I don’t mind, it’s all so long ago, & poor Naunce suffered most from her own spite because the result was she never knew a happy love. The Evening Standard asked me to review the book but I couldn’t. There are some very funny letters, the best are to Heywood, but I do agree it’s sad, & somehow hurtful to Muv & Farve. The awful dinner when Farve was so rude to Jim was not typical, everyone lost their tempers! But I at any rate look back to a happy childhood though I wished we could have stayed at Asthall, I suppose we all did. Don’t we all sound horrible in the book! Except you. Perhaps we are, but we do at least all love each other. I shan’t go to the party2 as it would spoil it for Decca if I was there.
All love Woo, Nard
Darling Woo
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I’m reading the Naunce letters properly, not dodging about. What a miserable time the Hamish time was. No money. Not getting on with Muv & Farve. Yet no possibility of leaving Swinbrook or O.M. Cottage. A real nightmare. I can’t think why she didn’t go away more for visits. I’m sure lots of people asked her. Perhaps the worst was the pennilessness, it must have made her feel trapped. Oh dear I would a thousand times rather be very old like now than so miserably unhappy & yet young. She ought to have had a lovely time. I loved my life but of course I never had an unhappy love affair & I always had a little money – enough to go & stay with Gerald at Rome for example. You had your Stork1 & rushed about all over Europe. Why was she so utterly stuck, poor Naunce. She always had her room at Eaton Square I’m glad to say.
All love, Nard
Darling Debo
I’m afraid you’re right, I am often lonely & bored. The few of my Paris friends who are still alive I don’t really want because I’m too deaf & a pest to one & all. When I’ve got a fascinating book it’s all right, & when it’s summer I go in the garden & amuse myself. At this time of year what I want is what I can never have again, Kit. It’s the worst of a happy marriage, you go on missing it for ever I suppose.
Now there’s my grumble but I must tell you I’m much better & almost back to really well. So you see I’ve no cause to grumble & feel v. ashamed of it when I think of various nightmares one hears of.
Love darling, Honks
Darling Honks
Did I tell you the Aunt K1 saga. Stop reading if so.
She went to the opening of parliament, ermine & velvet & all. Tripped, fell, broke her hip. Was taken by ambulance to the new hosp. in the King’s Road where Isabel had Rosa.2 Black Rod,3 only interested in his own, telephoned. Got a black nurse. Rod to Nurse (both black) ‘you’ve got a patient there in peeress’s robes, they are worth £10,000 & I want them back at once’. Nurse already thought Aunt K was a crazy old woman in fancy dress, confirmed in that by B.R. asking for the fancy dress back.
History doesn’t relate what happened to them, pushed down the sluice do you think? But history does relate what happened to Aunt K. She was on a life support thing, the drs thought it was time to switch it off & let her die, which it looked as if she was going to do anyway. Switched it off. She not only didn’t die but started to get better, so much so that she went in an ambulance from London to HAWICK,4 please picture that. She’s in the hosp. there, asking for books. I’ve sent her Parnell, I do wonder if she’s up to the weight.
SO GLAD you’ll come in Feb.
Much love, Debo
Woman met more glittering grandees c/o Ldy M Keene, her new friend, including Mr? Sir? Lord? Richardson, ex gov. of Bank. I expect she gave him some sound financial advice.
Darling Debo:
Dear old Harold [Acton] has died. What a character he was, right from Eton days. I wish he hadn’t written such silly fiction, his genius was in his conversation & personality. How we laughed in the old days. He made any party.
About Abe Bailey,1 he did a wicked thing to me. I met him at Chartwell when I was about 15 & he discovered I loved ostrich feathers, they were the fashion & beyond our means. He said ‘Oh I’ll send you a trunk full of ostrich feathers’. I went home & boasted & the sisters said ‘he won’t really, he’ll forget’. Well, they were right. I was so disappointed I made a vow never to promise a child something & then fail to keep the promise, & I hope I never have. Diana C[hurchill] married his boring son John but it didn’t last. He was an old buccaneer & doubtless one of Winston’s many rich benefactors. The story about the strike is garbled. The Gen. Strike called to support the miners collapsed in a few days. The miners went on striking for many months & were starved into submission by the mine owners. It horrified people & is I think the reason why to this day the miners are treasured by the public. I was 16 & it made me violently anti-Tory
Love darling, Honks
Dearest Hen
Since I wrote about American pronunciation1 people have sent me some pearls, viz. someone from Virginia told a friend of mine she was coming to England for the honey. Hunting, Hen. And when Ld Antrim went to Texas to raise money for the Nat. Trust he was introduced as rustic royalty & then there was a right muddle about earl and oil.
Births Marriages & Deaths. Harold Acton. He was pushing 90. I shall never forget the terror of when he took a log out into the snow at Biddesden & pretended it was a baby & murdered it. I suppose I was 10 & it haunts me still. He came to stay here once & his manners made going in & out of a room impossible, already old he struggled to get out of a deep sofa every time. M de Givenchy did the same when he came, makes the English look v. off hand. (I know H Acton was English but didn’t carry on like one.) His obit, said he started a mag at school called The Eton Candle which was immediately changed to The Eton Scandal.
Inspired by Declan & Rosa I’ve started sticking in photos (there is a sort of coffin with 8 years worth waiting, ghoulish prospect), of course I’ve started with the latest & am on your golden wedding, & the invite to Bob’s 80th birthday & yr 75th. V. comical. How HAVE WE HUNG ON IN THERE so long? Goodness knows.
Much love, Yr Hen
Darling Steake
What splendid news of your grandson James.1 He has started so well & you must be very proud of him. How old is he now? I well remember him not only when you were all staying here a long time ago but also lunching one day in London on another occasion.
I rather doubt being able to go out to you because I am getting very wobbly, not as agile as when you were here in the Autumn & I do fall very easily. It would be awful if I broke something when in America. Also I dread long air flights & there really is no other way to get to you. So I do hope you will be over again in the Autumn. I feel very feeble saying that I am not able to accept your lovely invitation & I know I would love to see America again but honestly the old legs are beyond it now alas. Of course you were miles & miles from the earthquake, I always forget that it took us four days in a rubberneck coach to get from Los Angeles to San Francisco, staying in lovely places on the way up. We did spend two nights in the Yosemite.
Much love to you all from Woman
Dearest Hen
Well there we are.1 It is the shock, I suppose, & the FINALITY, which make one cry so much & all the little things which went with her. There’ll never be any one remotely like her, will there?
To put you a bit in the picture. She was staying with Margaret Budd2 for a jolly London wk-end, they’d done shops, dinner with E. Winn, more shops & then went for a drink with a next door friend, fell down steep stairs & broke both bones in the right (weak) leg below the knée.
Ambulance men perfect & very quick (‘we’ve got an English lady here’ they said – rare bird, true enough), hospital at once – wonderful in every way, new, off Fulham Road. Spent a dopy night & next A.M. was operated on to put plate in the usual way. All went well & on waking she asked what won the Grand National. I spoke to her (asked for the nurse & got her) THAT EVENING, still a bit sleepy but quite OK. That was Sat. Sun & Mon never better, seen by E. Winn who said she looked v. pretty in bed & was in fine form & very funny. Tues A.M., A & I went to London from Cork, punctual, drove to Margaret’s where we found her outside her door saying quick quick, they’ve just telephoned to say come at once. So we dashed. Found curtains round the bed, I said I’m her sister I must see her & the Sister said talk to the dr. He took us to a little room which I suppose ought to have been a sign of the seriousness, he said all the technical things which had happened in her poor body & I said so what’s her future & he said she died 10 minutes ago. Hen. Please picture. After a bit we went to see her, so odd, just a bod with no one there.
I will keep you in touch about everything & will do flowers of course. Mon at Swinbrook 2 P.M.
Much love, Yr Hen
Hen – after we rang off one idea did occur, viz. obits in the newspapers. Obviously there’ll be the usual canned obits (always at the ready in the newspaper files, ready to
spring when the Grim Reaper does) but I was wondering if some cld be organized as in case of Sally Belfrage1 from friends who knew her? E.g., Jim Lees Milne, whose letter about Muv all those years ago in The Times or more likely Telegraph, was so strikingly good – he’d be a prime choice to write about Woman. You cld doubtless think of others. This would have to be organized p.d.q. because of newspaper deadlines.
I DID love being allergic to kidneys. Reminded me of a few other Woman-isms; when Nancy got another tortoise to mate with the one she had, Woman rushing in from the gdn to say ‘Those tortoises are hand in glove!’ And even when we were children & Super Cinema opened in Oxford, Woman saying ‘Oh good, I see we can get supper there’.
Funeral on Sunday; Hen do send flowers from Decca & Debo. I loved what you said on last floral tribute occasion (Rud) that Decca and Debo was a long-ago leftover from childhood.
Much love, yr Hen
Darling Debo
I made everything worse for you by being so frightfully upset. I know it seems impossible but it was the very last thing I had envisaged and in each message they all seemed so ‘pleased’ with her, but of course common sense should tell one that any operation at her age just is dangerous. I’m so sorry but it was the terrible shock and I was in physical pain for ages, you know that French expression ‘le cæur gros’, well my heart seemed to have become huge and pressed on everything. Being alone it went down again & now I’m just very sad for me, and you but not really for her. Not much of a life if it had been a wheelchair. So lovely that she’d had such fun with Margaret and had seen nearly everyone, wasn’t it. Also a peaceful death, how lucky that is.
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